Accomplishments! Sort of. Got the battery charged, in a fashion. Good enough to kick the bike over and get it to start and run. Primary jet felt clogged since it wouldn’t go over 5% throttle or so, so I rode around the block to try to free up the needle aaaaaand it died and wouldn’t restart when it got warm. Decided to bite the bullet and yoink the carb out.

It’s like a large metal apple of hateful finnicky bullshit.

Nasty goopey sticky grossness on the needle. That might have something to do with it.

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Honestly now that I’ve done it once I think I could have the carb removed and broken down in 10 minutes. I cleaned a ton of nastiness out of the accelerator pump and float bowl, made sure the floats were adjusted properly, cleaned the needle and jets out before calling it a night and tossing the carb back together. And because it was a logical next step I unhooked the rear wiring harness and unbolted the rear fender. I’ll probably be hacking this up and getting rid of the 90% dead weight that composes it, leaving enough for the seats to bolt to and to keep rocks from getting flung skyward, but removing enough to show off that rear tire.

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Unfortunately instead of the nuts that I’m told should be there the tops of the shocks are held on by bolts with allen heads that are all rusty. Sure. I’m sure that won’t strip out or anything. Ugh... problem for tomorrow though.